


'cause i'm gonna be free and i'm gonna be fine

by philthestone



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, a subtle reference to teenage morrissey and schmidt, aaaaye, also featuring The Gang and. AND, its the zombie au we all need and dont have nearly enough of, this is entirely emilys fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 21:04:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8549041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: It's six months into the zombie apocalypse and he's maybe lowkey making out with Amy Santiago in the Hudson river at two am in the morning.
That's normal, right?





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is all emily's fault and it was originally supposed to be a comprehensive zombie apocalypse Story but it turned into a dumb thing about jake and amy taking a psuedo bath thing in the hudson river at two am
> 
> good times
> 
> anyways, reviews are me finishing my billion wips sometime this century. enjoy!

So like, Jake really needs a shower.

It’s a mark of how gross and dirty Amy must feel that she follows him without hesitation. Jake’s already splashing as quietly as he can into the questionably sanitary river, his t-shirt and jeans in a heap on the damp ground of the shore, when he turns around to see her stripping out of her jeans and lumpy jacket and her t-shirt, wading in after him. 

Jake grins and lets his knees bend so that his tummy and chest submerge in the water easily. It’s muggy enough outside that the cold water is refreshing, rather than shocking, and Jake lets himself sigh in relief and dip his head back, the back of his hair just barely touching the water.

“Hmmm.”

Jake looks up to see Amy’s eyebrows creased into a frown, hands curling into fists at her sides. He can see the perfect upside down _u_ of her mouth, filling her face with a frown. She’s on edge, anxious – well, Amy’s usually on edge and anxious, and like, okay, maybe it’s one of Jake’s unspoken life missions to make her _less_ so – but he knows her and he knows exactly what she’s thinking right now. The fact that she keeps glancing over her shoulder and at the looming warehouse behind them, abandoned against the backdrop of the Hudson and the surrounding scraggly trees, is not lost to him. 

So Jake steadies himself on his feet again, biting back a happy groan at the way the air brushes against his wet skin, and whispers, “Hey, Santiago.” He watches as she jumps, the lines of her body tightening, to look back at him with wide eyes. “I’m turned around so I can see behind you, right?”

Amy’s shoulders relax, marginally, and her eyes narrow. “Jake –”

“Forreal,” says Jake. “And you can see behind me – so we’re good. All bases covered. I swear I’ve got your back if you’ve got mine.”

Predictably, Amy huffs and places her hands on her hips, thigh-deep in the murky, deliciously cool water. “We’re _supposed_ to be on a scouting mission right now. If we take too long, we’ll either attract attention, or they’ll send out a search party that will _definitely_ attract attention, and – God, Jake, think of the inconvenience – and, you know, statistically, it’s more likely that the zombies would approach from land,” she says. It all comes out in one breath. “Which means that your responsibility is _inherently_ higher than mine – would zombies walk on water, Jake? I don’t think zombies can walk on water. I did research on the last functioning library computer, it’s not listed as one of their –”

“Amy,” he says, looking her in the eye. This is easy; her eyes are standing out big and bright and expressive in the bright moonlight. “I’ve got your back.”

There’s something about her that softens – a minute, graceful thing, rippling through the lines of her face and the curve of her shoulders and even the greasy way her hair hangs in its ponytail. They’re only on a routine scouting mission, something they’ve done tons of times before, and so far it’s been utterly silent. In any other situation, Jake’s instincts would tell him that _utter silence_ means Bad Thing About To Happen, but he’s come to learn that zombies are just really annoyingly loud by _nature_ and that you will definitely know if you’ve got company. Jake grins again, and then reaches down into the water to scoop some into his cupped hands, splashing it over his arms and shoulders. He can _feel_ the grossness, and Amy’s probably made a million jokes about his similarity to a gross teenage boy in the past, but there’s something about the inability to shower that brings back bad memories of lethargic afternoons lying face down in bed. He might eat like a five year old, but Jake _hates_ feeling unwashed.

He’s busy scrubbing his hands over his neck and trying to awkwardly reach his back when he catches Amy’s eye again, her face alight with relief and her hair wet and plastered to her face. She needed this just as much as he did – their plumbing’s been non-functional for nearly two weeks, and if Jake didn’t already think that the zombie apocalypse was a _way_ bigger bummer than the movies made it out to be, not having running water is pretty much the brand tag on the bruised apple of his life right now.

(Apples are just under carrots on the list of Unacceptable Foods. Even apple pie is the worst.)

(Not that he even has _access_ to apple pie anymore, _God_.)

He’s down to four pairs of useable boxers and this definitely means that they’re going to have to wash their underwear sooner than anticipated this week, but being able to just soak in water and hope that the sand from the riverbed – Amy’s idea – cleans off at least one percent of the greasiness is enough to fuel Jake for another three days at least, even if there’s no apple pie or running water. Amy yelps in front of him and he looks up from trying to get sand out of his belly button to see her hopping up and down awkwardly in the water, trying to scrub at the inside of her knee. The water is making the polyester of her scavenged sports bra and shorts look heavy and uncomfortable. There’s a piece of hair stuck to her cheek, spread into her mouth, and their eyes meet.

Jake bursts into giggles.

“ _Shhh_!” says Amy immediately, bringing one hand forward to wave across the water in his face; the universal symbol for _no, stop giggling, we might get eaten by zombies_. She’s smiling sheepishly, though, and Jake only giggles harder.

(It might be two in the morning; he can’t be held fully responsible for anything coming out of his mouth.)

“Y-your _hair_ ,” he says. “In you – your _mouth_ –” He dissolves again, hiccuping on air, and now Amy’s laughing too; she always has a hard time keeping a straight face when Jake loses it, something he’s always been secretly delighted by. One of her hands is pressed against her mouth to stifle the sound and she splashes forward, tripping to try and silence him. 

Jake’s gasping for breath and about to comment on the bit of wet newspaper pasted to her shoulder when he inhales a mouthful of water.

“A– _ghck_ – Santiago!”

“ _Shhh_!” hisses Amy again, raising her hand as thought to splash him a second time. Her face still bursting at the seams with a smile. It’s been too long, Jake knows, since they laughed – he’d almost forgotten what Amy’s laugh _sounded_ like, and God isn’t that a terrifying thought, goosebumps suddenly rippling their way across the bare skin of his arms as he coughs and splutters. 

It’s weird, _so_ weird, because one hour they’ll be firing glocks at the undead, praying it’s no one they know, and the next Jake’ll be perched on the old breakroom couch in their precinct-turned-fortress watching Gina paint Cagney and Lacey’s nails with the last remaining nail polish she owns.

(“Lavender,” says Gina importantly, sniffing with concentration and dotting Cagney’s tiny index nail with precision. “So don’t chew these off or anything, kay? Auntie Gina’s still waiting for Jacob to forage a Sephora.”

“Ugh, Gina,” Jake groans, lying on top of the Captain’s old desk and trying to help Amy do inventory of their winter jacket stock. “Sephora’s all the way on Fifth, there are zombies _everywhere_ there.”

Gina raises an eyebrow in an unimpressed fashion.

“ _Death_ , Gina,” says Jake, while Amy looks pained. 

“Mmmhmm,” says Gina.)

One minute he’ll be trying to rub the grime off his face in the old bathroom sink, hating the way the smell of rot is clinging to his clothes, and the next he’ll be spinning around in their last functional wheely chair as Charles intently rations their meager supply of oregano and salt into tiny packets. 

(“If we mix oregano with crushed Cheetos,” Charles informs him sadly, “we _may_ be able to recreate a traditional Latvian dish. But even _that_ , Jake, is doubtful.”

"You'll figure it out, buddy," Jake tells him comfortingly, putting the finishing touches on he and Nicolaj's crayon drawing of a garbage truck. Nicolaj has decided that the truck should be coloured maroon, even though they _do_ still have yellow crayons left, but Jake admires his creativity.)

One week, he’ll be terrified out of his mind because the recon team didn’t come back, because he doesn’t know if Amy’s alive or dead and maybe he’s still recovering from the fact that they found her alone and trembling violently only three months ago, Teddy dead on the roadside, and she only stopped trembling after a full hour of him hugging her tightly to him and not speaking a word.

(They get a radio call from Charles when he finds her and Rosa has to kick Jake in the shin with the steel toe of her boot so that he doesn’t just bolt out of the car and sprint three streets over on impulse. Jake can still feel the numbness in his fingers, the paralysis of the fear.) 

The next week, Terry will be lecturing him on the importance of making sure he’s fit enough to outrun zombies while Rosa knits socks.

He didn’t know Rosa could knit socks before the zombie apocalypse. Jake finds this understandable but somewhat offensive, because that means there have been _so_ many Hanukkahs wherein he could have gotten a Die Hard-themed knit sweater from her and _didn’t_. 

The betrayal is almost too much to bare. 

Ultimately, they’re all still alive – they finally found Captain Holt three weeks ago, after a terrifying series of months wherein Jake stayed up at night imagining Holt calling the undead _punk_ before he shot them and pretending that anything else was impossible. They’ve adopted two stray youths, Kevin, Sharon and the three girls, Darlene and Lynn, Genevieve and Nicolaj, two of Amy’s older brothers and their assorted children, Jake’s mom, and the old Chinese lady who owns the bodega on Jake’s old street corner – it’s kind of, like, a village-shoved-into-an-old-police-precinct-type sitch. But the truth of it is that Jake doesn’t even _know_ how many people have been lost; they’re functioning on flickering electricity and weekly foraging runs that are varying degrees of successful; and Amy’s parents are dead ( _gone, whatever –_ Jake doesn’t want to think about it). He doesn’t think either of them have had a good shower or a good laugh in _ages_. 

Of course, regardless of what Amy’s not-laughing has been doing to his soul, he can’t just let her _win_ a splash fight, zombie apocalypse or not.

“Wha – Gah! _Jake_! Pbbt – no, oh my gosh, _not fair_ –”

“Catch me if you can!” Jake whisper-shouts, and starts trying to run as quietly as he can through the water away from her so that he can _win_ this thing.

He’s not fully sure what winning entails, but Amy’s trip-wading towards him, now, determination settling onto the lines of her face, and it’s _adorable_ and Jake hates that he’s soaking wet in the Hudson river six months into the zombie apocalypse and he’s thinking about Amy Santiago’s adorableness while she’s wearing hand-me-down sports underwear and has soggy newspaper on her shoulder, but, well, there it is.

He ignores the reality of things – as one does – and goes back to optimizing his splashing technique. If he cups his hand and spins his whole body, he’ll get the most water to lift into the air, and –

“ _Oomph_ –!”

Okay, cool, so Amy’s just gone for the rugby-tackle-’em-and-completely-submerge-them-in-water strategy. Jake can respect that.

His feet are slipping against the riverbed and he can feel his own hair plastered to his forehead when he comes up for air, Amy’s hands gripping his shoulder and bicep a little too hard (she really has the _craziest_ of firm grips, that seminar must have been wild), but she’s still grinning, her smile bright and impossibly heedless in the shadowy light. It’s asscrack am in the morning, Jake’s pretty sure they’ve made enough noise for most zombies within a ten-mile radius to start zomby-ing their way towards them, and Amy Santiago’s whole body is pressed against his in the Hudson river, because personal hygiene is very important and she _knows_ it. She’s also grinning like an idiot, which definitely means that she just won and Jake is _appalled_.

“That was flagrant rule breaking,” he manages to whisper-shout when he’s spit out all of the vaguely fishy-tasting water. “ _Flagrant_ rule-breaking, Santiago!”

“False,” Amy whisper-shouts back, her hands still on his shoulder and arm, still smiling that mega-watt smile and _oh, oh no, it’s starting to do something to Jake’s heartbeat_. “I used a more direct strategy!”

“You didn’t _plan ahead_?” asks Jake, aghast.

“You were obviously planning ahead,” says Amy earnestly, her hair still half-covering her eyes because she hasn’t actually lifted her hands from his body parts yet to push it out of her face yet. “Which meant that the best strategy was to just _go_ for it, Peralta.” Her grin widens. “I took a leaf out of your book.”

“First of all, I own no books,” says Jake seriously. (This is a true statement; prior to the zombie apocalypse, Jake had the Nancy Drew collection and a battered copy of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone_ collecting dust somewhere underneath his bed. Now, he has no idea what’s happened to them. Amy suggested they host a memorial service for them, and it was a mark of how much the whole My Life Now Sucks Because Zombies vibe was affecting him that Jake almost _agreed_.) “And, bee, Detective Rule-Breaker-iago, I am ashamed of us.”

She sticks his tongue out at him, probably because he numbered his list inconsistently (“ _One_ and _bee_ are nonsensical and _do not constitute_ a proper list!” Amy had once told him, passionately clutching her salad fork in the break room in a time before zombies were a thing) and it’s literally the most ridiculous thing he has ever seen. But it’s also right about the moment where Jake’s brain catches up with his five senses and he realizes that Amy’s hands are really warm where they’re holding on to his wet skin and her face is like, two inches away from his.

Also, they’re both in their underwear. And, even worst but _more importantly_ , he’s kind-of-sort-of _like_ -liked her for like. The past year.

Jake swallows and tries not to grimace when his saliva still tastes like fish water.

They’ve seen each other in their underwear before, probably too many times for it to be normal, but Jake’s always chalked it up to an occupational hazard of the job – perps tend to throw up on you, there are chemical hazards in some crime scenes, sometimes you genuinely need to wade into garbage to tackle a bad guy, and most of the time, working with a person for six-odd years in an occupation that sometimes requires you to stay up for three days straight solving crime automatically makes you comfortable with the person in a way that not many other things can. Amy’s been wearing his old college t-shirt to the gym for the past three years because she lost a bet. Jake’s drunk texted her pictures of him eating Chinese chicken salad sans shirt before. 

The thing is, all those other times, the world hadn’t really been ending. He’d not spent months swallowing back the sticky feeling in his throat whenever Teddy kissed her. He’d not slept on the same couch as her out of necessity or seen her sob silently in a way that tore her whole body, big, heaving things that left her trembling without energy. She’d never instinctively gripped his hand before in the middle of a firefight, nor shot zombies off of him with a scavenged shotgun. She’d never grabbed his face before, frantic, running her hands down his neck and arms to make sure there were no bite marks. And a year ago, they would never have stripped down to their shorts without a second thought because they both smelled like old socks and zombie slime, so that they could take a weird shower-bath hybrid _together_ in the Hudson river at two am in the morning.

Jake blinks down at her; Amy’s hand is still on his shoulder. 

The moon is really, _really_ bright. He can see the shape of her cheeks, the way her eyelashes have clumped together, the individual strands of her hair stuck to her face. Amy’s smile is morphing, soft and silent, into something else. 

“Jake,” she whispers. 

“I don’t see any zombies,” he says, and his voice is a little strangled, and then he’s kissing her and she’s kissing him and Jake kind of almost wants to cry.

God, this is crazy; experience the end of the world for a couple months and you turn into an emotional mess the first time you kiss the girl of your dreams. Jake thinks he should probably ask Terry if this is normal. Terry, he knows, has been happily married for a long time and probably knows about what is and isn’t normal in relationships. He wonders if Captain Holt ever felt like this.

But then Amy’s hands card into Jake’s sopping hair and he completely forgets about Terry and Captain Holt because he’s sort of making out with Amy Santiago in the Hudson river and it’s _completely_ normal and this, Jake thinks, _this_ is the only plus-side of the zombie apocalypse.

(They get back to home base with their hair still wet and the news that saw literally no zombies at all, and Gina immediately groans and smacks Charles on the shoulder.

“I can’t believe they finally got it on,” she moans, whilst Charles squeaks in surprise, Sharon covers the girls’ ears with her hands desperately, and Captain Holt raises an eyebrow.

“C’mon, man,” says Amy’s older brother Raphe. “I can’t believe I owe Captain Holt money.”

“Excuse me everyone,” says Karen cheerfully, looking up from where she’s braiding Amy’s niece’s hair. “But I believe Captain Holt owes _me_ money.”

Jake rescinds his previous statement; lack of plumbing is most certainly not the worst thing about the zombie apocalypse.)


End file.
